2084

PHILADELPHIA – A suburban Philadelphia school district used school-issued laptop webcams to spy on students at home, potentially catching them and their families in compromising situations, a family claims in a federal lawsuit.

Lower Merion School District officials can activate the webcams without students’ knowledge or permission, the suit said. Plaintiffs Michael and Holly Robbins suspect the cameras captured students and family members as they undressed and in other embarrassing situations, according to the suit.

Tom Halperin, a 15-year-old sophomore from Wynnewood, said students are “pretty disgusted” and have started putting masking tape over their computer webcams and microphones. He noted that his class recently read “1984,” the George Orwell classic that coined the term “Big Brother.”

Everyone loves 1984. Bush, Obama, Glen Beck, Al Franken, Mugabe, and Mandela all love 1984. And so does the Lower Merion School District. 1984 is about as controversial as a warm shower.

The issue is that Tom is day-dreaming. His school is nowhere near absolute statism like in 1984. The closest thing is the DPRK, but even there people aren’t exactly clawing to get out. You can’t have an absolute tyranny like in 1984 after Orwell’s book has been written and popularized because anything that remotely resembles the Fourth Reich gets broken up immediately. So we’re still fantasizing about killing the old enemy that’s been dead since Hitler died.

What I want to know is what will the book 2084 will be about. Surely in 2084, people will wonder how we let our society get so out of hand.